The Call of the Canyon eBook

Four hours later, in a twilight so shadowy that no
one saw her distress, Carley half slipped and half
fell from her horse and managed somehow to mount the
steps and enter the bright living room. A cheerful
red fire blazed on the hearth; Glenn’s hound,
Moze, trembled eagerly at sight of her and looked
up with humble dark eyes; the white-clothed dinner
table steamed with savory dishes. Flo stood before
the blaze, warming her hands. Lee Stanton leaned
against the mantel, with eyes on her, and every line
of his lean, hard face expressed his devotion to her.
Hutter was taking his seat at the head of the table.
“Come an’ get it—­you-all,”
he called, heartily. Mrs. Hutter’s face
beamed with the spirit of that home. And lastly,
Carley saw Glenn waiting for her, watching her come,
true in this very moment to his stern hope for her
and pride in her, as she dragged her weary, spent
body toward him and the bright fire.

By these signs, or the effect of them, Carley vaguely
realized that she was incalculably changing, that
this Carley Burch had become a vastly bigger person
in the sight of her friends, and strangely in her own
a lesser creature.

CHAPTER VI

If spring came at all to Oak Creek Canyon it warmed
into summer before Carley had time to languish with
the fever characteristic of early June in the East.

As if by magic it seemed the green grass sprang up,
the green buds opened into leaves, the bluebells and
primroses bloomed, the apple and peach blossoms burst
exquisitely white and pink against the blue sky.
Oak Creek fell to a transparent, beautiful brook,
leisurely eddying in the stone walled nooks, hurrying
with murmur and babble over the little falls.
The mornings broke clear and fragrantly cool, the
noon hours seemed to lag under a hot sun, the nights
fell like dark mantles from the melancholy star-sown
sky.

Carley had stubbornly kept on riding and climbing
until she killed her secret doubt that she was really
a thoroughbred, until she satisfied her own insistent
vanity that she could train to a point where this outdoor
life was not too much for her strength. She lost
flesh despite increase of appetite; she lost her pallor
for a complexion of gold-brown she knew her Eastern
friends would admire; she wore out the blisters and
aches and pains; she found herself growing firmer
of muscle, lither of line, deeper of chest. And
in addition to these physical manifestations there
were subtle intimations of a delight in a freedom
of body she had never before known, of an exhilaration
in action that made her hot and made her breathe,
of a sloughing off of numberless petty and fussy and
luxurious little superficialities which she had supposed
were necessary to her happiness. What she had
undertaken in vain conquest of Glenn’s pride
and Flo Hutter’s Western tolerance she had found
to be a boomerang. She had won Glenn’s
admiration; she had won the Western girl’s recognition.
But her passionate, stubborn desire had been ignoble,
and was proved so by the rebound of her achievement,
coming home to her with a sweetness she had not the
courage to accept. She forced it from her.
This West with its rawness, its ruggedness, she hated.